"Not long. Hours."

They landed among trees like redwood-sized dandelions. Louis had seen these elsewhere.

Light and noise would alert them if a ship returned. Meanwhile they dismounted, stretched, removed their pressure suits. As soon as Acolyte sniffed the air, he bounded away with a howl, hot in pursuit of something the others never saw.

Louis swung his kitchen converter out on its boom. He loaded grass and small plants into the hopper. Hanuman was doing the same. If the kitchen box was based on what theyd used thirty-odd years ago, it would process local vegetation or animal flesh, make handmeal bricks he could eat, and discard the dross. Hed have to catch something meaty, soon.

It extruded a brick.

"Wrong setting," Hanuman said. "Here." He turned a dial on Louiss kitchen. "That was for me. Fruit eater."

Louis broke a chunk off the protectors brick and tasted it. "Good, though. We eat fruit too."

It hit him without warning, a rush of nostalgia. Hed been here before, on unknown landscape in all this Ringworld hugeness, sharing a handmeal brick with Teela. He turned away from Hanuman as his eyes filled with tears.

He remembered Teela Brown.

She was tall and slender and walked with the confidence of a centenarian, though she was only in her thirties. Hed first seen her wearing silver net on blue skin; hair scarlet and orange and black, like bonfire flames and smoke, streaming upward. Later shed put aside flatlander style. Nordik-pale skin, oval face, big brown eyes, and a small, serious mouth; dark and wavy hair cut short to fit into a pressure suit helmet.

She had never stumbled, never had a bad love affair, never been sick or hurt, never been caught in scandal or a public gaffe, until she attended Louis Wus birthday party. Louis still believed that was a statistical fluke. Among a population in the tens of billions, someone like Teela Brown could surely be found.

But the Experimentalist Party among Piersons puppeteers believed that they had been breeding the human race for luck. Teela was the descendant of six generations of Birthright Lottery winners. Whatever happened to Teela could be interpreted as lucky:

Falling in love with Louis Wu. Following him here.

Losing her way, in a domain three million times the surface area of the Earth. Finding Seeker, the brawny explorer who could show her so much of the Ringworlds secrets.

Finding the Repair Center beneath the Map of Mars. Finding a cache of tree-of-life root. Falling into a coma while her joints and brain case expanded, gender disappeared, gums and lips fused to horseshoes of sharp bone, skin thickened and wrinkled into armor… while she became a protector.

Nessus led us, and I led Teela, to the biggest, gaudiest toy in the universe. How could she not want to make it her own? But only a protectors intelligence could hold the Ringworld safe. And when the Ringworld was endangered, Teela Brown the protector saw that she must die.

Death isnt bad luck to a protector. Its just another tool.

Acolyte returned with his mouth bloody. "Good hunting here. My father is missing another fine adventure."

Hanuman asked, "Louis, can you pass for crew on an ARM ship?"

"Theres a notion." Louis thought about it. Did he really remember enough…? "What I cant pass for is a local. Im Homo sapiens, Earth origin. Why do I want to be a crewman, Hanuman? Crew of what?"

Hanuman said, "We must not be servants of a protector. So, I must be a tree-dwelling animal, and you must be a wanderer unless you serve some greater force. If you serve, it must be some aspect of the Fringe War—"

"The ARM, of course. But I dont know ARM protocol, and Im not in their records."

"Isnt there a way you could have been missed?"

"…No. Lets try something else."

He munched on a handmeal while he thought. Drop the previous story; start over. Tell something simple. Something Louis Wu can keep straight, and Acolyte also.

He said, "Lets try to guess what a random ARM fighter has in its computer records.

"They know that we came home — that Chmeee and Louis Wu came home with Nessus injured and no Teela Brown. Suppose Teela lived? She never finds the Repair Center and tree-of-life.

"They might know that the Hindmost landed on Canyon twenty-three years later, and Louis Wu disappeared then. They might have tracked Chmeee too, from one of the Kzin worlds up to where the Hindmost collected him.

"So the Hindmost brings us both back to the Ringworld as crew. Thats the way it happened, but lets say he planned to rendezvous with Teela. She and Louis Wu have been living together ever since." It could have been that way. Should have been! Even though the Ringworld would have been torn apart a year later. Still daydreaming, Louis said, "They had a child after her implant wore off, and thats me."

Hanuman said, "Hypothesis diverges from ARM records."

Tanj! "How?"

"When would these events take place? Louis Wu returned here thirteen years ago. Does the ARM know that?"

"…Yes, they do. ARM found me on Canyon just before the Hindmost collected me." Louis had killed two agents. "Tanj! That would make Louis Wus son twelve years old at best."

"Can you pass for twelve?" Hanuman asked.

"Hah hah."

"Could you, Louis Eldest, have left Teela with a child? The child would be aged a hundred and sixty falans."

"Almost forty years old. Couldnt happen. Teela must have had her five-year infertility shots. Theyd have had to wear off. We never had the time."

Acolyte asked, "Can you be a child of Teela and Seeker?"

"Hah! No. Different species."

Hanuman and Acolyte waited.

Start over. "At the end of the first expedition, thirty-eight years ago, Chmeee and I came back to known space and the Patriarchy. We turned over Long Shot and some information about the Ringworld. We were debriefed by a joint commission, then the ARM asked me a lot more questions. They didnt learn much, because we didnt explore much. Our second expedition was twenty-three years later. What if there was an expedition in between?"

Hanuman asked, "Who sent it?"

"The Hindmost sent it. Expedition number one-and-a-half. I can fake that. I met a puppeteer named Chiron on the Fleet of Worlds. He was pure white, perfectly coiffed with a wonderful array of classic gems, and a little smaller than Nessus—" His companions had never met Nessus. "Thirty pounds lighter than the Hindmost. He sounded just like the Hindmost; I suppose they all had the same training.

"So now we can all describe him, stet? The Hindmost puts Chiron in charge. Chiron leaves not long after Chmeee, and I came back to human space. That brings him here… mmm… at least thirty years ago. He finds Teela. Her infertility shot has worn off. Teela takes up living with one of Chirons crew. Im the child."

"What is your name, child?"

"Luis." Acolyte might forget, but hed still sound right: Looiss, Luis. "Luis Tamasan," the first Oriental name he could think of, to account for the epicanthic folds in his eyes. "Chiron had his records erased. The ARM already knows that puppeteers meddle with their records. Theres no Fertility Board record either, because my father… mmm. Horace Tamasan was born to a freemother, an illegal birth. Lots of bastards go to space."

Hanuman said, "A consistent tale. Have we the acting knack to tell it?"

Tunesmiths voice broke in without warning. "Hanuman, you surmise that an ARM fighter has dropped its add-on tank and gone off to battle. I scan an area bigger than worlds, and I find nothing to fight. My neutrino scan shows no power sources. Battery-powered ships would not register, I assume. Must I watch until they fire lasers or antimatter bullets?"